On Jan. 25, 2002, two days after my friend and Wall Street Journal colleague Danny Pearl left my home in Karachi, Pakistan,
for an interview from which he didn't return, I stood in front of a dining room wall I'd covered in blank paper, a thick black
Sharpie pen in my hand. I wrote one name in the middle, "DANNY," and drew a box around it.

Danny Pearl was born on October 10, 1963, in Princeton, New Jersey, and grew up in the Los Angeles area. He had two sisters. He attended Stanford University where he co-founded the student newspaper Stanford
Commentary, graduating in 1985 with Phi Beta Kappa honors. He was a Pulliam Fellow summer intern at the
Indianapolis Star before joining the North Adams Transcript and the Berkshire Eagle. He moved to the
San Francisco Business Times and joined the Wall Street Journal in 1990 in the newspaper's Atlanta
bureau. He worked in the Washington, London and Paris bureaus, reporting as a Middle East correspondent.
Pearl was aware of the dangers that reporters faced. He filed a report to his Journal editor with
recommendations to improve the safety of reporters. In October 2000, Pearl became the South Asia
Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal. After Sept. 11, 2001, Pearl reported in Pakistan, where
he was kidnapped on January 23, 2002, and subsequently murdered.